Relational Alchemy Psychology Services
No matter where you have been, evidence-based therapies are flexible, valuable, and focus on changing now.
Individual Services
Individual psychotherapy helps clients deal with particular issues, symptoms, and stressors. We can’t avoid negative emotions like sadness, fear, worthlessness, and worry. Eventually, they catch up with us. We can't avoid having thoughts and looking for meaning behind what we do and experience. We are human. As with all emotions, occasional sadness and anxiety are normal life experiences.
However, when mood and anxiety issues interfere with our ability to enjoy life, or get in the way of our goals, it is time to seek help. My integrative approach is informed by current findings in the fields of psychology and neuroscience, allowing me to provide you with the most up-to-date, informed, and effective care. My expertise, as a PhD level Clinical Psychologist, is in time-limited, evidence-based Cognitive-Behavioral Therapies (CBT) and the Unified Protocol for emotional disorders. Similarly, I also employ third-wave CBT (like Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and Mindfulness-based interventions) which focuses on behavioral processes like developing healthy ways to cope with stress, emotions, and complicated relationships.
My approach is compassionate, genuine, and goal-driven—creating a safe, nonjudgmental space where you feel fully supported. Therapy with me is active and sometimes challenging. Together we create a collaborative process of transformation. I lean into, listen, understand, and enhance authentic expression. Together, we’ll work to reduce anxiety, decrease stress and sadness (and rumination) created by intrusive thoughts, step beyond your comfort zone, and make meaningful, lasting changes. What that means and what that looks like is different for everyone...
Consider individual therapy for many reasons, including:
- Manage Overwhelming Emotions – Get grounded in the face of anxiety, depression, anger, guilt, or burnout.
- Reignite Motivation – Break through inertia and reconnect with purpose, energy, and routine.
- Practice Self-Compassion – Quiet your inner critic and treat yourself with kindness, not judgment.
- Live More Authentically – Show up as your whole self—less filtered, more fulfilled.
- Strengthen Relationships – Deepen your capacity for connection, communication, and vulnerability.
- Speak Up for Yourself – Learn assertiveness, navigate conflict, and express your needs clearly.
- Release Perfectionism – Let go of unrealistic standards and make space for rest, creativity, and growth.
- Feel More Present – Reduce mental noise, increase mindfulness, and create space for inner peace.
- Break Unhelpful Patterns – Identify recurring behaviors or relationship cycles that no longer serve you.
- Process Identity Shifts – Navigate changes in how you see yourself—personally, professionally, or relationally.
- Support Neurodivergent Needs – Understand how your brain works and build strategies that honor your wiring.
- Work Through Grief and Loss – Hold space for mourning, memory, and meaning after loss or major life change.
Find purpose, satisfaction, connection and ease in every day.
My approach is flexible and personalized, adapting to each client’s unique needs, symptoms, and goals. Together, we’ll identify practical tools and insights to support long-lasting change, strengthen your confidence and resilience, and help you face what’s next with clarity and purpose. I also recognize the broader systems and cultural forces that impact your well-being, and I’m here to support both personal growth and a deeper understanding of those external influences. You deserve joy, agency, and belonging—even when the world suggests otherwise.
You Don’t Need a Diagnosis to Feel Better
Not all struggles come with a label — and not all growth begins with one. You might just feel off: emotionally flat, unmotivated, disconnected from your routines or relationships. Maybe the day feels heavy for no clear reason, or you’ve lost the sense of meaning that used to guide you. This kind of diffuse distress is more common than it seems — and very treatable.
Therapy doesn’t require a diagnosis to be life-changing. Whether you're looking to restore balance, reclaim your energy, or reconnect with what matters to you, targeted psychotherapy can help you get back into rhythm. Together, we can build skills, uncover stuck patterns, and explore practical strategies that support your daily functioning, emotional steadiness, and sense of direction.
For some clients, a coaching approach works best — something more structured, goal-oriented, and advice-driven. Coaching offers a space to get unstuck, make concrete plans, and hold yourself accountable without shame. I offer both modalities, depending on what you need: space to process, tools to apply, or both. You don’t have to wait until things fall apart to get support. Sometimes it just starts with wanting to feel more like yourself again.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy with Depression & Anxiety:
Choosing the Right Therapist for Anxiety & Depression
Finding the right therapist for depression or anxiety is a personal and important step in healing. While both conditions can be treated using similar approaches, everyone’s symptoms, strengths, and life experiences are different—so therapy should be tailored to fit you.
It can be difficult to open up about anxiety or depression, especially if you’ve felt misunderstood or judged in the past. That’s why it’s essential to find someone you trust. While that trust often builds over time, asking thoughtful questions early on can help you find a good fit. You might ask your therapist how much experience they have treating anxiety and depression, what modalities they use, or how they define success with clients.
You and your therapist can also define what meaningful progress looks like for you. Whether that’s feeling more energized, less overwhelmed by worry, or more connected in your relationships, having shared goals helps track your growth and guide your work together.
How Therapy Helps with Anxiety & Depression
Therapy creates a safe and structured space to better understand your inner world, challenge unhelpful patterns, and build healthier ways of coping with stress, emotions, and relationships.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is one of the most well-researched and effective treatments for both anxiety and depression. It focuses on the idea that current patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving are connected—and that by learning to notice and shift these patterns, we can start to feel better. This approach doesn’t dwell on unconscious childhood memories, but instead helps you take action in the here and now.
With depression, therapy can help reduce symptoms like low motivation, hopelessness, and rumination—those looping, repetitive negative thoughts that can feel impossible to escape. Modern therapies like CBT, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and mindfulness-based approaches help you create space from those thoughts, develop self-compassion, and reconnect with joy and meaning.
With anxiety, therapy helps you recognize how fear and worry maintain themselves in your life. Anxiety can show up in many forms—racing thoughts, physical tension, panic attacks, perfectionism, or avoiding social situations. Anxiety can be about a fear of flying, or feeling overwhelmed by small, every-day, daily worries. CBT, like Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), teaches practical skills to interrupt the anxiety cycle and regain a sense of safety and agency. It’s not about avoiding anxiety altogether, but learning how to respond to it in ways that support your well-being.
Across both conditions, therapy is a collaborative process that empowers you to feel more balanced, connected, and in control of your life.
Therapeutic Approach
Here are some additional values and approaches I bring to my affirming therapy.
Increasing Complexity
As humans, our nervous systems are wired to keep us safe—constantly scanning for signs of danger, even before we’re consciously aware of it. This quick, automatic response can leave us feeling guarded, especially in relationships and unfamiliar or vulnerable situations. When we’ve been through trauma or difficult relationships, it makes sense that our minds might default to rigid thinking—seeing things as good or bad, right or wrong—as a way to protect ourselves.
Building Meaningful Connection & Support
Healing doesn’t happen in isolation—it happens in connection. Whether you're used to being the one who “has it all together” or you're someone who’s always walked the edge alone, therapy can be a rare space where you're invited to be fully seen, supported, and understood—without judgment or agenda.
Values-Driven & Client-Centered
Your values are the compass, and therapy is the space where you get to tune in to what truly matters—beneath the noise of expectation, performance, or survival. I don’t approach your life with a fixed map of what should happen. Instead, I help you clarify your own priorities, vision, and truth—even (and especially) if those things have been buried under burnout, anxiety, or other people’s projections.
Deepening Self-Awareness & Insight
Therapy is not just about symptom relief—it's about curiosity. Together, we explore your inner world with depth and nuance, helping you recognize patterns that may be so familiar they’ve become invisible.
Embracing Embodiment
Therapy is not just a mental process—it’s physical, too. Emotions are experienced in the body, and healing often involves noticing where those emotions live, and gently working through them.
Practicing Radical Nonjudgment
In this space, you don’t have to perform, prove, or explain why something matters to you. All parts of you—messy, brilliant, raw, contradictory—are welcome here. That includes the parts you’ve hidden, felt shame about, or feared might be "too much" for others to hold. We won’t rush to label or fix. Instead, we slow down and make space for what’s real.
Embracing Growth & Transformation
Transformation isn’t always graceful—it’s often uncomfortable, nonlinear, and emotionally intense. In therapy, we honor the complexity of personal evolution: the grief that comes with letting go, the fear of stepping into the unknown, and the courage it takes to grow anyway.
Play! & Imagination
Growth doesn’t always have to be heavy. In fact, playfulness, humor, and creativity are essential tools for healing and resilience. We also know that trauma, stress, and social polarization can shrink our emotional flexibility—making life feel rigid, black-and-white, or overly serious.
Aligning with Authenticity
Authenticity is about identity. It’s the ongoing process of aligning your inner truth with your outer life, so you can feel fully yourself rather than fractured or hidden.
Life Transitions Can Be:
coming out / dealing with fame / getting married / transitioning / starting a new career or changing jobs / gig culture ups and downs / child leaving for college / Facing existential dread or identity loss during success / trauma / blending families / opening a relationship / buying a home / significant loss (of anything or anyone important to you) / divorce / ending difficult relationships / major lifestyle changes / health changes / Coming to terms with aging / Becoming a caregiver (for a parent, partner, or child) / Facing infertility or choosing to remain child-free / Experiencing spiritual crisis or religious deconstruction / Returning to civilian life after military service / Navigating immigration or cultural assimilation / retirement / Graduating from college or finishing school / sobriety / Facing financial upheaval or bankruptcy / online dating after a long term relationship / moving / Experiencing empty nest syndrome / Going back to school as an adult / having children / Surviving a natural disaster or community crisis / Experiencing a public scandal or reputation crisis / Living with chronic illness or disability / Starting gender-affirming medical procedures / Leaving a high-demand group or cult / accidents
Support Through Change
You don’t need to be in crisis to benefit from therapy. Many people seek psychotherapy during times of transition — moments when life is shifting, identities are evolving, or new roles are emerging. Whether you're navigating a career pivot, adjusting to parenthood, recovering from burnout, or rethinking long-held beliefs, these experiences can stir up uncertainty, stress, and emotional friction even if they don’t meet criteria for a formal diagnosis.
My approach is direct, collaborative, and evidence-based. I specialize in helping people move through transitions with clarity and grounded support — not just by listening, but by working with you to identify tools, patterns, and strengths you can actually use. Therapy can be a space for recalibration: to grieve what’s ending, name what matters, and take intentional steps forward.
You won’t find vague nods or passive check-ins here. I offer active, structured guidance rooted in research-backed modalities, tailored to where you are and what you're facing — no pathologizing, no pressure to have it all figured out.
Exploring Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation -- Or not...
I bring over a decade of specialized experience working with gender, sexuality, and identity in therapy. For some clients, exploring these aspects is central to their healing and growth. For others, being part of the LGBTQIA+ community is simply one part of who they are—not the focus of treatment. Either way, your identity will be respected, understood, and never treated as a barrier to care.
As a culturally competent clinician, I offer a shared understanding of language, community, and lived experience. Whether you're seeking support around identity, relationships, anxiety, trauma, or creative and professional goals, our work will be collaborative and tailored to you. I follow a patient-led approach to treatment—your goals shape the direction of therapy, and I provide the tools, insight, and expertise to help you reach them. I also offer a wide range of resources to support clients navigating gender and sexual minority-related experiences.
What if I've tried therapy before and didn't feel better?
The fact that you’re here now suggests something important: you’re still open to the possibility of change.
Therapy is deeply personal work, and a strong, trusting relationship with your therapist is essential. If you haven’t felt safe, understood, or genuinely supported in past experiences, it’s no wonder the process felt stuck. My approach is different—grounded in clinical expertise, but also in deep human connection. I meet you where you are, with honesty, compassion, and no judgment.
Growth isn’t always comfortable. But with the right support, it becomes possible—and transformative. If you're ready to give therapy another shot, I’m here to help make it worth your time.
“I'm fine. I'll figure this out.”
When was the last time you engaged in self-care and things that help you feel at peace and balanced?
Our cultural focus on individualism and self-sufficiency has placed an emphasis on personal growth and capacity, without acknowledging that not dealing with tough situations and big emotions (or dealing with them alone) will often manifest as anxiety, depression, physical pain, or disconnection from others.You don't have to accept 'fine' as your 'normal.' Therapy helps.
No matter where you have been, evidence-based therapies focus on changing the now. I strive to help my clients experience the world mindfully and in accordance with their personal values. Through our work in cultivating an affirming, authentic, and non-judgmental therapeutic relationship, I provide support while we collaboratively deconstruct what is causing distress in your life and preventing you from being your most effective and authentic self. Individual therapy facilitates insight and growth, becoming more effective at actualizing your values, and building more authentic relationships with yourself and with others.*Artwork by Ingrid Solano
Understanding and Treating PTSD
Trauma-Focused therapy
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can develop after experiencing or witnessing something overwhelming, threatening, or deeply distressing. Symptoms can include flashbacks, nightmares, emotional numbness, hypervigilance, or feeling disconnected from yourself and others. These reactions are not personal weaknesses—they are your nervous system’s way of trying to protect you after trauma.
Therapy for PTSD focuses on helping you reclaim safety, restore agency, and reconnect with life after trauma. This may include approaches like trauma-focused CBT (like Cognitive Processing Therapy or Prolonged Exposure), narrative therapy, or somatic practices that help regulate the body’s response to stress.
Healing from trauma is not about forgetting what happened—it’s about reducing its ongoing impact and building the capacity to live with more calm, confidence, and connection. In a supportive therapeutic space, you can begin to integrate your experiences, strengthen your internal resources, and move forward without trauma defining your story.
Trauma is experienced differently by everyone...
You may notice psychological, emotional, or even physical changes. You may have nightmares or flashbacks, or be unable to get a good night’s sleep. You may feel anxious one day, depressed the next. You may feel out of control while doing things you never did before or while engaged in your daily normal routine. You may constantly feel like you are in danger. You may be constantly irritable with loved ones or coworkers. You may be easy to anger, and it feels explosive and out of control. You may be a super-problem solver, needing to know what happens next at all times and be prepared for everything-- even knowing where every object/belonging is precisely in your home.
Trauma occurs in many different ways...
Trauma can occur as a car accident, an assault, a natural disaster, a loss... Trauma from stigma, prejudice, and discrimination can be a constant threat to expressing your authentic self. Trauma can be compounded by having to work with, serve with, or live with a perpetrator every day... Trauma can be any experience that was too much, too fast, or too soon without the support afterward or enough time to process what just happened.
Trauma focused therapy is collaborative...
Trauma therapy isn’t so much about talking about the experience and details of your trauma, as it is about understanding the impact it has had on you and your life, and how you can resolve any difficulties these may have caused for you. Some speak about their experiences in detail, some don’t. I practice evidence-based trauma-focused therapies that have been shown to be effective and short term (~12 weeks). My goals, in addition to yours, include helping you to relieve your distress, develop skills, use those skills effectively, and increase your insight. After that, I am available for check-ins and refresher sessions if needed. Some enjoy continued support, while others have specific goals that indicate to them that they are done with therapy.
Trauma focused therapy is unique to you...
We also don't have to dive right in. Engaging in trauma-focused therapy can be a goal, too. I have worked with many diverse individuals who have experienced sexual assault or an unwanted sexual experience recently, or in their past. Sexual violence is pervasive, but still not spoken about openly. And... if you are unable to tell anyone, it’s hard to find help and support. These obstacles and stuck points can come from ourselves, our relationships, our communities, and society. I strive to help you overcome intrusive thoughts and behavioral/habitual obstacles, and help you chart your own path to wholeistic well-being and balance. I can help you understand the impact of traumatic experiences, and help you gain the skills to find resiliance and healing. We can start with feelings of anxiety, depression, or relationship concerns first, in a trauma-informed way.
Adolescents and Young Adults
It's hard to feel understood: by peers, by parents, by anyone. These times of our lives can bring feelings of confusion and discouragement. ‘Adulting’ can feel overwhelming. Expectations have grown exponentially, and guidance has become limited. Feeling anxious, depressed, scared, incapable or lost are struggles that therapy can help you sort through. You should be able to feel confident in yourself and abilities, and know that you can manage.
With years of experience working with teens and young adults, I offer a space where you’ll feel heard, respected, and never judged. My approach is relatable, down-to-earth, and rooted in clinical expertise. I've been told that I am easy to talk to, and a bit savvier than your average adult. Together, we’ll work through what’s holding you back, build confidence, and help you feel more capable of handling whatever life throws your way.